Since 1999, walking with people toward freedom — and taking the weight off the pastors who carry everyone else.

Pathway Counseling Ministries, Inc. was established in the spring of 1999 with a single purpose: to make professional, faith-based counseling available to anyone who needed it, in partnership with the local church.

Through the late 1980s and early 1990s, the local church had no counseling of its own. Every need was either referred out into the community or absorbed by the pastor himself — one more responsibility on a man already carrying the church. Families waited. Pastors burned out. Pathway was built to change that.

Counseling, brought back into the church

Pathway was created as an integrated auxiliary of the local church so that counseling offices could be established inside church buildings. That did two things at once: it made counseling more affordable, and it put counseling back where people already trusted enough to walk in.

It also lifted a burden off pastors and their staffs — the individual, couple, marital, and family counseling they were never trained or resourced to provide.

From the beginning, Pathway used an income-based fee structure. No one was turned away from help they had asked for.

No one was turned away from the help they came looking for.

For its first six years, Pathway provided individual, couples, marital, and family counseling across a wide range of needs: anxiety, stress, depression, behavioral issues in children and teens, conflict resolution, infidelity, eating disorders, trauma in all its forms, and addiction.

Two programs that changed who we are

The severity of what we were seeing in the counseling room led Pathway to build two new programs.

The Butterfly House

Individual and group counseling for single moms — women single by choice, by divorce, by death, or by the abandonment of a spouse or partner. The work centered on building healthy relationships, healing from trauma, communication, interviewing skills, financial planning, and finding a community of support. Group counseling was provided for their children as well.

Defender Ministries

Defender was built for parents raising children as the internet and the cell phone exploded around them. Seminars and trainings ran in local Christian schools and in living rooms, where families invited their friends and neighbors to learn how the technology worked and how to keep their households safe. For its time, Defender was on the cutting edge of that work.

Defender also created an animated teaching series for elementary-age children, Disciple Now weekend materials and merchandise for church groups across the Southeast, and lessons and seminars for collegiate ministries addressing internet pornography and its effect on students and their relationships.

Both programs ran for more than seven years and reached hundreds of individuals and families.

Becoming Pathway Ministries

The Butterfly House and Defender Ministries proved that the need was larger than counseling alone. Pathway Counseling Ministries, Inc. became Pathway Ministries, Inc. — a name that freed the leadership to build whatever the community actually needed, inside the counseling room or outside it.

Caring for the ones who carry everyone else

In the early 2010s, alongside its work with local churches, Pathway turned toward a group almost no one was serving: pastors, their staffs, and their families.

Funding was raised so those services would be affordable to church leaders. Since 2010, Pathway has ministered to pastors in the majority of the United States — offering a secure, confidential place to simply talk, and to face the pressure of leading a church and what that pressure costs a marriage and a family.

Pathway was founded to take weight off the local church. That has never changed.

Where we are today

Alongside the counseling arm of the ministry, Pathway is building three programs, each aimed at helping others walk in freedom.

Resolute

A mentoring and discipleship program for students at the University of Central Florida, begun in the fall of 2024. Two decades of partnership with the leaders of UCF's campus faith-based ministries opened the door to meet with young men and talk honestly about the questions they face on campus — and the ones waiting for them after graduation. Resolute has grown into a full, year-round program.

Read more about Resolute →

Kintsugi Care

Officially launched in the fall of 2026, though the work began taking shape in 2021. Kintsugi Care equips and cares for those on the front lines of nonprofit and ministry work — particularly in countries where resources are scarce.

Begin Again

Officially launched in the fall of 2026, with foundations laid beginning in 2020. Begin Again provides trauma-informed mental health care for survivors of human trafficking. Working in partnership with local nonprofits, it exists to open a path toward healing and new freedom.

CLOSING CALL TO ACTION

Pathway exists because a pastor should not have to carry it alone, and because no one should be turned away from help. If you would like to talk with someone, partner with this work, or bring Pathway into your church, we would like to hear from you.